Buckley retires after 33 years with housing authority

Sunday

Feb 24, 2013 at 3:15 AM

By Michelle Kingstonmkingston@fosters.com

DOVER — It was a unanimous decision to hire Jack Buckley as executive director of Dover Housing Authority in 1979.

“He stood out,” said Franklin Torr, who was the chairman of the DHA board at the time. “He was a local person, he was involved in social programs and we thought that would be a great asset to the housing authority.”

Torr said it proved to be a great hire, as Buckley has wowed both the board and residents by creating a number of programs to help the largest public housing development in the state succeed, while also improving the city as a whole, bringing the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire to Henry Law Park and planning the development of the waterfront.

After 33 years of managing 900 low-income housing units in both the public and private sector and sitting on a number of committees and boards throughout the city, Buckley officially submitted his resignation on Wednesday morning, effective at the end of the year.

“I have mixed feelings about it,” Buckley said on his choice to retire. “It’s a little sad. DHA has been my life for 33 years. It is my baby.”

His work at DHA may end in December, but his involvement in the community will continue. Buckley said he will spend half his time at his home on Arch Street and the other half at his condo in Venice, Fla., playing golf and pickle ball — avoiding blizzards, blustery winds and below-freezing temperatures.

“I love Dover,” he said. “Dover is always going to be my home, but I just don’t like being cold.”

A year ago, Buckley said he began to think about retirement. He said he started to worry about the future of public housing and the budget cuts in Washington, D.c., and wanted to resign before it continued to get more and more difficult to do what he loves — bring programs to those in need of assistance.

“The days of us being able to find money for social service programs is coming to an end,” he said, while adding they are still working hard and continuing to look into new projects, including a possible purchase of property off Court Street for more low-income housing.

For the past 33 years, Buckley has been able to be more than a “rent collector,” he said. “I have been someone who has been able to develop programs and assist residents to improve the quality of their lives. If I have made any difference in the lives of any of our residents, I think I’ve done my job.”

The city’s general legal counsel, Allan Krans, said after 21 years of sitting on the DHA board, he has gotten to know Buckley very well. He said Buckley has helped make the DHA highly regarded in the region and has been the one “to make things happen up there.”

During his first year as executive director, Buckley broke ground on the Cocheco Park Complex, an Urban Renewal Plan, saying it was “the final touch to activities revitalizing the downtown community.” The complex sat on 15.8 acres of land and brought in 211 apartments, a new Orchard Street parking lot, a larger First Street parking lot, a new Chestnut Street, Central Avenue and Washington Street bridge and a river walk and commercial development.

Thirty-three years later, and Buckley is working equally as hard to revitalize the downtown once again.

Krans joked about the amount of time Buckley has been at DHA.

“It has been 33 years? But he is only 43!” he said, adding Buckley has been a strong leader and has kept a “valuable mission and scope.”

During Buckley’s time as executive director, DHA hired a police officer to patrol just DHA neighborhoods, keeping them drug- and crime-free. He made changes to Hampshire Circle, the DHA neighborhood once known for 56 drug-related arrests made after a public riot.

Buckley and DHA purchased the abandoned St. John’s Church in 1981, which he said was home to over 20,000 pigeons, “a majority of them being dead,” before they renovated the property into elderly housing units.

He worked with Wentworth-Douglass Hospital to purchase a van to bring elderly residents to and from medical appointments, with the goal of keeping them living independently longer and to avoid premature institutionalization.

DHA now provides children with after-school assistance at the Seymour Osman Community Center, which helps them stay in school and, ultimately, enjoy school. The Center offers programs from homework help to theater classes to basketball practices, which Buckley said have been highly successful.

“You need to give people more than just a place to live. You need to give them opportunities,” Vice Chairman of DHA Mark Moeller said. “(Buckley) has worked tirelessly to do this.”

Another program offered through DHA, which is run by staff member Michele Ryan, is the Family Self-Sufficiency Program. Ryan provides the framework, tools and support to transform the lives of people living in Section 8 housing at DHA to find the motivation to overcome obstacles, save money and eventually be free from public assistance.

Ryan has worked to turn around residents with no family, drug addictions and very little resources to have jobs, buy homes and cars and go to college.

“Over the years, we’ve been able to build up and get funded for a lot of programs that we feel improve the quality of life of our residents,” Buckley said. “We are one of the few housing authorities that have a Family Self-Sufficiency Program.”

Buckley said other housing authorities copy what Dover’s does, as they are at the forefront.

“Very few housing authorities have what we have,” he said. “And imitation is the best form of flattery.”

DHA Deputy Director May Glovinski has worked side-by-side with Buckley during his entire time as executive director on developing projects and programs for DHA. She said the changes that have taken place there are directly attributable to his extraordinary vision for Dover’s future.

Glovinski, who is retiring in June, said one of the best memories she has of Buckley is when he received the Citizen of the Year award from the Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce in 2009. She said everything she said in the letter she wrote to nominate him still holds true today.

“From his successful endeavor in the ’70s to save the historic buildings slated for demolition under Dover’s first Urban Renewal Plan, to his passionate involvement in the restoration of Dover’s waterfront and the relocation of the Children’s Museum from Portsmouth to Dover, (Buckley) has worked tireless and selflessly for the good of his community and its citizens,” she said in the letter. “A glimpse of (Buckley’s) appointment calendar would be certain proof to anyone of the number of committees, boards, commissions and organizations of which he is a member.”

Glovinski added that Buckley’s involvement is not toward one group in particular, as he advocates for the “poorest and neediest of residents while at the same time promoting Dover to prospective corporations and businesses seeking to relocate to the Seacoast area.”

Throughout his career, Buckley has served on the board of trustees at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, the board of directors for the Chamber, the board of trustees at McIntosh College, the board of directors for Dover Main Street and as a member of the McConnell Center Redevelopment Committee.

He also served as the chairman of the New Hampshire Public Employee Labor Relations Board for over 30 years and as the chairman of the New Hampshire Delegation to the White House Conference on Aging.

Buckley currently serves as a member of the city’s Licensing Board, the Parking Commission and the Dover Police Building Facility Committee and the Cocheco Waterfront Development Advisory Committee.

“If he believes in something that is good for Dover, he just doesn’t know how to back down,” Moeller said of all of the work Buckley has done for the city.

Former Dover Mayor Scott Myers, who worked closely with Buckley on a number of projects, said his work in the waterfront development project was instrumental.

Buckley worked with Myers to originally plan the project in the early 2000s, which will bring condominiums, restaurants, parking and storefronts to the land along the Cocheco River. Myers said Buckley helped form the Cocheco Waterfront Development Advisory Committee, “taking the project out of the hands of the city council and into a less political body to oversee the development.”

Buckley said he believes the waterfront project is where it is today because of the involvement the housing authority has with its development.

“I was hoping we could at least break ground during the time I was here, but I am optimistic that Mark Dickinson (the developer) is going to find the equity investor he needs to make that happen.”

Dickinson said over the years, Buckley has helped keep him interested in the project.

“He’s a terrific guy who loves the city of Dover and is dedicated,” Dickinson said. “He wants to see the waterfront developed and he wants to see good things happen to Dover.”

Dickinson added that Buckley has been supportive of Dickinson throughout the entire planning process and has continued to encourage him and the project, advocating and representing the city.

“And to credit his personality, we have become friends over time,” Dickinson said. “He’s intelligent, but beyond intelligence, he has wisdom that is very helpful in life and in work.”

His wisdom also brought the Children’s Museum to the city, according to several city officials. Buckley said he knew Dover needed a cultural arts center and it belonged on the Cocheco River.

“I kept saying it was crazy to have the gym on prime waterfront property,” he added.

Today, the museum brings in over 70,000 people a year.

“He was instrumental in helping the museum move from Portsmouth to Dover,” Executive Director of the Children’s Museum Justine Roberts said. “He always has had a very long vision for the community and has understood how to put building blocks in place to be part of the economic and infrastructure side of the community to move forward. He saw the Children’s Museum as a piece of that.”

Molly Hodgson Smith, the executive director of the Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce, said Buckley has had his hands in projects all over the city and she hopes he continues to stay active in the community after his retirement.

“He has served us so well for so many years and I know we will continue to benefit from his work as an advocate here,” she said. “He is absolutely one of Dover’s strongest and most ardent supporters, between his work on the waterfront, to bringing the museum to town, to serving on the board at the Chamber.”

“Pretty much anything of importance that has happened in Dover, Jack has been a part of,” Hodgson Smith added. “He is a go-to if you want anything done and done well. He is one of those top three people that you call.”

In addition to the committees and boards he has sat on and is still involved in, Buckley has also continually been active in local and state politics. He said he has helped prepare many city councilors and school board members for their positions and was an election analyst for WTSN for 22 years.

From 1978 to 1979, Buckley also served as Dover mayor and was the vice chairman of the New Hampshire Mayors’ Association.

“He’s been very important to the city, as former mayor, and serving as the executive director of the housing authority,” current Mayor Dean Trefethen said. “He’s done a lot of good things for the city. He’s a person people can go to to get things done and there are not a lot of people like that in the city, but he’s one of them.”

Trefethen added Buckley is very deserving of what he has done for the city and that his work has benefited the community.

With over thirty years of involvement in the city, late nights and a lot of work, Buckley said it was all just part of the job.

“It was important for me to be involved in the community,” he said. “The housing authority could not operate in isolation.”

Moeller said the executive board has known for some time now that Buckley has been thinking about retiring.

“We talked yesterday about the qualities we are looking for in a new executive director,” he said. “I don’t know how you can find somebody that has all the things Jack Buckley has.”

While they begin the process of hiring a new executive director, Buckley said he will look into his next chapter.

“I’m still young,” he said. “I want to do something because I want to stay involved. I can’t golf all week.”

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